News and Deals: March 28, 2012 – Passengers Restrain Captain After Crisis on JetBlue Flight, Tourists returning to Tunisia, Are airlines withholding seats so you’ll pay a premium? and French tourism campaign uses photographs of South African beach

Passengers Restrain Captain After Crisis on JetBlue Flight
New York Times

The captain of a JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas suffered a bizarre midair breakdown on Tuesday morning, forcing passengers to restrain him as the plane made an emergency landing in Amarillo, Tex., where he was removed from the aircraft and hospitalized.

Passengers said the captain of Flight 191 was acting erratically outside the cockpit and could be heard shouting about Al Qaeda and bombs being aboard.

Tunisia’s key tourism industry has begun to recover in the wake of last year’s revolution, and the number of foreign visitors is likely to rise by about 20 percent this year, Tourism Minister Elyess Fakfak said.

“We expect a high number of tourists compared to last year, an increase of about 1 million,” he told reporters at a regular news conference.

Tourism accounts for 6.5 percent of Tunisia’s gross domestic product and employs about one in five people directly or indirectly.

A few months ago I booked a flight for two and then went to select seats on the airline’s site. Based on the destination and time of year, I was surprised to find only two adjacent seats were available without paying a premium. But I was even more surprised a few weeks later, when we boarded the aircraft and a flight attendant announced that only 30% of seats were occupied, so we should all feel free to stretch out.

So how could a flight that looked nearly full a month earlier wind up with seven out of ten seats empty? That’s a question only the airlines can answer, and they’re not eager to provide many details.

Are some carriers intentionally holding back seat assignments, in the hope we’ll all pay for “premium” seats? It’s a fair question, and the evidence is intriguing.

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By: Matt Long

Matt has a true passion for travel. As someone who has a bad case of the travel bug, Matt travels the world in order to share tips on where to go, what to see and how to experience the best the world has to offer.Also follow Matt on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.